In its ability to generate plausible answers to a huge variety of questions, ChatGPT is unprecedented. But it has very clear precedents in other ways.
Tim Harford Imagine a person whose desire for the easy life is stronger than their sense of ethics. And imagine that this person gets hold of a cutting-edge computer app that can produce fast answers to hard questions. Then imagine that person is given a hard question. Instead of answering it himself, he taps it into the computer, then relaxes for a while. Finally he hands over the computer’s answer and takes credit for many hours of hard work, none...